For those of you that love when archeology and Christianity intersect, you’ll love the images found in this CNN piece, Vatican: Oldest known images of apostles Andrew and John found.
Extremely fascinating!
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Not V-Day. Not even plain Valentine’s Day.
I hope everyone had a happy Saint Valentine’s Day!
This is not the best writing on his life, but read about Valentinus: priest, bishop, martyr, true Christian saint.
I realize I may be in the minority, but I admire Christopher Columbus.
Though I’m not her biggest fan ever, Phyllis Schlafly has a nice piece about the man, the hero, the legend. It states in part:
“Columbus had great moral and physical courage. Again and again he faced mutinous sailors, armed rebels, frightful storms, and fighting Indians.”
So, as we celebrate Columbus Day, let’s marvel at what he accomplished and at the Lord he strived the serve.
“Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness.”
-George Washington
“The only thing new in this world is the history that you don’t know”
-Harry S Truman
Or happy Canada Day, whichever you prefer to say. You know how the saying goes, that government is best which governs closest to home. Or something like that.
With the progress in Iraq dominating headlines, I wanted to link to one of the most superb speeches on the subject. Delivered at The Heritage Foundation in 2005, the greatest professor in America, Dr. J. Rufus Fears, offers the most-thought provoking comments.
The piece, “The Lessons of the Roman Empire for America Today,” begins:
I am honored to give a lecture named after Russell Kirk, who told us to ponder the permanent things, such as history and human nature. It is about human nature and history that I want to speak to you this afternoon.
We are on patrol today in Iraq. Men and women of the United States armed forces in armored vehicles patrol the streets of Baghdad. They pass in the way of so many who have come before them: the Egyptian charioteers of Ramses II, the Macedonian phalanx of Alexander the Great, the Roman legionnaires of Caesar and Trajan, the Crusaders of Richard the Lion-Hearted, the legionnaires of Napoleon, the Camel Corps of Lawrence of Arabia.
All of these have come through the Middle East. Many of them have come with the best of intentions, by their lights, to bring stability, even freedom to the Middle East. All have passed away. The Middle East has been the graveyard of empires.
In the course of history, we have come to take up that burden. We live in a time as momentous as that of the American Revolution, the Civil War, the days after Pearl Harbor. In each of these watersheds in our history, we have not only taken up the burden, but we have advanced the cause of freedom.
In the American Revolution, we saw to it that a nation could be established under liberty and law. In the American Civil War, we purged ourselves of the great evil of slavery so that we could go on and become a model for the world. In World War II and the Cold War that followed, we advanced the cause of freedom so that today, more people live in freedom than at any other time in history. That is the result of America bearing this burden.
I think that September 11 is just as important a date as Pearl Harbor, and we now advance into a new and dangerous era. Think of Winston Churchill when he said how Britain set out across unknown seas, through uncharted waters towards unknown shores, guided only by the beacon of freedom. We have another guide, and that is history and the lessons of history. For the founders of our country, history was the most important single discipline that every citizen of a free republic should study.
Enjoy the rest here.
Frank Turek, of I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist fame, writes in his blog at crossexamined.com that Bob Cornuke, “a Christian Indiana Jones,” claims that the real Ark of the Covenant has been found. I won’t duplicate his post here, so go there and read it for the details. As Turek notes, who knows if this is true, but wouldn’t that be something if it is…
“We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.”
-George Orwell, written in 1939
Happy St. Patrick’s Day to one and all. Growing up, I always enjoyed this holiday, though until recently this Evangelical did not fully appreciate the saint behind it.
Of the many feats (some likely legendary but many true) of Patrick’s, I like that he explained the Holy Trinity by use of the three-leaf clover. My five year old daughter learned a powerful lesson from that, and I suspect the author of The Shack could use a similar lesson.
Read more about St. Patrick’s love for Christ and the people of Ireland here.
Did you know: “Washington’s Birthday is a United States federal holiday celebrated on the third Monday of February. 
It is also commonly known as Presidents Day (or Presidents’ Day). As Washington’s Birthday or Presidents Day, it is also the official name of a concurrent state holiday celebrated on the same day in a number of states.”
So, happy birthday to the father of our country, General Washington. Without question or debate, George Washington was and remains the greatest President that ever was or could ever be.
It is, however, profitable to mention others who positively shaped the course of this nation. In no particular order, here are a few:
OK, I know there are very few movies about this overlooked holiday, but if you and your family are looking for an informative and entertaining movie over the Thanksgiving break, you cannot do much better than The Mayflower Voyagers.
Then again, with A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving is pretty classic, as well…
Update: ABC is showing both, as a back-to-back holiday special, at 7 p.m. (CST) this Tuesday, Nov. 25!